


where the world begins and ends

by nyklen



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 11:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyklen/pseuds/nyklen
Summary: Mankind developed methods to mark the passage of time: the calendars of Ancient Greece were lunisolar, the Mayans used the Long Count system, the Thais denote years in terms of the Buddhist Era, and much of the known world today defaults to the Gregorian CE/BCE format.Diana defines her own: it starts the day they save the world and she loses him.





	where the world begins and ends

**Author's Note:**

> I had too many feelings after watching the film and had to write something. Title from a track by The Dears. Hope you enjoy.

  

**T-0**

_I can save today, but you can save the world._

 

The urban legend soldiers tell one another goes like this: your life flashes before your eyes in the moments before you die.

For Steve Trevor, he sees flashes of his future not-to-be.

She asked him once what people did when they stopped fighting, and for a few blissful moments, he sees the answers – he sees _them_ , in ten, twenty, thirty years: sliding a ring onto her finger as Etta and Sammy and Charlie and Chief bear witness; waking up to her in the mornings; having breakfast (coffee and pancakes) in a cosy kitchen; twins, a boy and a girl, running helter-skelter in their home, her laughter ringing behind him; them, with silver in their hair…

And then, nothing.

\--------------------

 

 

 

  **T+2**

On a cold winter morning, Steve’s watch stops, and her world almost literally stops with it.

In between the cold fear sliding down her spine that something _is very wrong_ and the panic that threatens to overwhelm her _she has broken it it is gone she couldn’t save this either_ , it hits her how quickly the little thing has come to be something she relies on. Its steady ticking has become a constant reminder of Steve, a symbol of love lost, of goodness and of her duty to humanity.

(In her more whimsical moments she likens it to Steve’s heartbeat: sure and strong against her cheek as she lay across his chest in a stolen interlude in a darkened room in Veld.

It stops, and she is reminded once again that he’s gone.)

Sammy is the first to notice her standing motionless, several paces behind, staring at the watch in her hand. He sees her glance up at them, her expression looking so lost for the first time since he met her in a tattered London pub that it feels fundamentally _wrong_. He crosses over to her, gives her the quick tutorial on hand-wound watches she never received, and the watch merrily resumes its ticking as though it did not just knock a demi-goddess’ world off-axis.

(The boys, to their credit, pretend not see the raw relief march across her face or the way her hand clutches it close to her chest for the rest of the trudge to the docks.)

\--------------------

 

**T-2**

He chants her name like a benediction. She murmurs his like an invitation.

He moves within her and she makes a note with what’s left of her rational mind to re-evaluate Clio’s  _Treatises_. Then he moves again and his fingers twist wickedly and _oh_ –

In the after, she looks up at him as they lay tangled in rough spun woollen sheets, a teasing smile on her lips, “we are awfully close.” He grins back, wraps an arm around her and presses them closer chest to tummy to thighs to toes, presses his lips to hers. She burrows her face into the hollow of his neck, where he smells of gunpowder and sweat and _Steve_.

In the after, he whispers in her ear, breath tickling, and promises that when the war is over he will bring her to a bar with “lots of swaying”, he will take her to the beach and to the fairs and they will have breakfast and read the papers and he will show her what humans do when they are not fighting.

(And for a moment he stutters and stills and wonders when he stopped treating his death in war as a foregone conclusion, when he started to _hope_.

He has a sneaking suspicion it has everything to do with her.)

She laughs into his chest and takes his hands and laces their fingers together. For a moment they are not an Amazonian princess and a small-town American boy-turned-British spy with the weight of war on their shoulders, but just two giddy young lovers basking in the other’s presence.

\--------------------

 

**T+10**

They bring her to a “good old English pub” (Sammy’s words, in an over-the-top what she assumes to be English accent) to cheer her up, plying with her bitter beer that numbs her tongue and coats her throat. The tiny space is packed with citizens (mostly female, mostly dressed in black, mostly alone, she tries not to notice) luxuriating in peacetime.

She allows herself to be coaxed, by Charlie’s rare exuberance and by the swelling infectious joy of crowd, to dance. The house band keeps up a lively tune and she is glad because that means there will be no swaying, and no swaying means she does not have to think about him and _them_ and what happens when the fighting stops.

Later, when the boys have walked Etta and her to the former’s place, Chief steps forward, and presses a photo into her hand. It is the same photo of him pinned on the memorial wall – beret tilted at a rakish angle, wide guileless smile, proud stance…

“This is the original,” he tells her, when she looks up with the question on her lips, “took the very hour he got his wings.”

She tucks it under her pillow that night.

The next evening, Charlie drops by with a box of Steve’s personal effects, cleared from his bachelor’s apartments. Most of his things are being shipped back to his family in America, he tells her, but he managed to salvage these, and he knows Steve would’ve wanted her to have it.

She wants to argue, to rationalise that someone who knew him but days should not take place over one who gave him life and raised him, but something in Charlie’s face gives her pause, and she accepts the precious box.

Under the journals and photos and knickknacks she finds the coat he wore on her first day in London at the bottom of the box, and reckons she can still faintly smell his scent on the cloth.

\--------------------

 

**T-5**

She draws into herself on the long boat ride from Dover to Belgium, standing so still and so fierce on the bow of the little boat, like a figurehead of yore.

Three-quarters of the way into the journey, and after some nudging from Sammy and Charlie, he ambles up to her, “uh, nice view eh?” (He has never really been one for conversation starters.)

He sees a hint of a smile flash across her lips before it disappears.

They stand (well, she stands, he leans onto the railing) in the cold for the better part of the hour, as he patiently waits. She takes in a deep breath, and turns to him with pained eyes, and he thinks he can see what she saw on that bridge in Dover: as the wounded hobble, wheel and are carried past her; a sea of shattered men with slack faces and thousand-yard stares medicine had to coin a new word to describe – studies in contrast with the fresh troops all bright-eyed and pressed uniforms pouring off the trains.

(It scares him a little that he didn’t flinch then – the scene has become commonplace for him, after four long years in the war)

“Some of them are just _boys_ , Steve. Your so-called leaders are sending them out to die.”

His head drops on a resigned exhale. He cannot explain the illogicality of war and conscription, but he tries.

“The law… mandates that all men 18 and over be required to fight in the war.”

There’s a terse silence he does not know how to break.

Finally, “how old were you when you first joined?”

He recalls driving to the recruitment office in Raleigh, his dad’s watch on his wrist, all stern determination to _do something_ _instead of nothing_ ; his cocky swagger and wide-eyed bravado wearing his uniform with his wings pinned on his chest; his pride at being posted (on loan!) to SIS. It feels like it happened an age ago, to a different, less-jaded Steve Trevor.

“Twenty-one.”

She turns from him and looks again into the distance, her next words so soft they are almost snatched by the wind.

“It took me three thousand years.”

\--------------------

 

**T+7600**

War is dead, but humans are flawed, and so the war to the end all wars finds itself a successor.

There are no gods this time.

The world of men, she continues to learn, does not need vengeful beings from other worlds to incite wars when monsters live within their ranks. She joins the Allied forces and tries to help where she can, but the European theatre is vast and chaotic and ruthless (to say nothing of the Pacific), and demi-goddess or not, she is but one person.

(It is here the stories, long dismissed as fanciful hallucinations of Great War survivors, begin to take root again, as soldiers share tales of a woman, tall and proud, in amour of gold and red and blue, bearing sword and shield, as if one of those ancient Greek heroes come to life.)

Two decades on and humanity does not change: she watches as boys get cut down by other boys, all wide eyes and blood-streaked faces, as gray-haired men plan and argue loudly and futilely behind closed doors; as families are torn apart and erased altogether from history by new chemicals deadlier than Dr. Maru’s worst; in crumbling, empty villages filled with rubble and broken bodies and remind her much too often of her failure in Veld. Her heart aches for each life she is unable to save, for the millions of innocent souls lost to the hatred in men’s hearts. She ruefully recalls a time not so long ago, when a younger, more idealistic Diana believed in a black-white dichotomy where the death of one malicious god would prove a panacea.

(She liberates a POW camp, and some grateful soldier coins the moniker “Wonder Woman”. The press, ever eager to report any scrap of positivity, seize on the story, and the name and her legend catch on like wildfire.)

But destruction also amplifies goodness, and she bears witness as men sacrifice themselves for love and country; as strangers open their homes and hearts to the suffering and the lost; as women join the war efforts – the tireless medics with bloodstained aprons and workers with clothes grease-streaked… and she is reminded every day that mankind can also be courageous and selfless and kind and good. She _believes_ and she hopes.

The entire war finally ends, brutally and abruptly on the back of two irradiated once-cities, she weeps for the better part of 15 August. She feels far from wonderful, and finds herself too exhausted and heartsick (and alone) to celebrate.

She thinks she has seen enough bloodshed to last her for the next millennia.

\--------------------

 

**T-9**

He wakes up abruptly to the sound of waves slapping against the sides of the sailboat, the spluttering sound of engines in the distance and his cheek buried in the softest hair.

He wakes up to a body ( _her_ ) curled up against him, her face in the crook of his shoulder as though she has been trying to burrow into his warmth overnight. He finds his body curled in towards her, with one misbehaving arm looped over her torso and he hastily snatches it back, glancing around, half-expecting her mother to materialise and slice off his arm.

It takes a couple more minutes for him to blink the sleep away and sit up, even as she makes a soft noise in her sleep and inches slightly towards him.

Another few minutes pass as he gazes stupidly at her sleeping form, and he cannot help but brush an errant curl aside. His angel, his saviour, peaceful in sleep.

The moment is broken on the sound of engines choking, much closer than they were before. He sees the tugboat now, with the Union Jack flying crisp in the salty wind.

He has a mission to complete.

\--------------------

 

**T+35999**

Steve’s watch ticks on, and so years pass. Her armour carries the traces of time and encounters: the leather has darkened, the metallic body tarnished and nicked and scratched (her shield fares no better).

Bruce Wayne is the most taciturn person she knows, but in the months since they met, she has learnt he is also a huge bleeding heart.

Their quest is tiring – it takes much time, money, effort to find metahumans who would rather remain hidden. A good thing then, that she is immortal, he is a billionaire with resources and a penchant for highly-advanced technology, and Lois is very good at what she does.

She has come to expect Wayne Enterprises deliveries, usually actual useful information with the guise of a priceless artefact (she has always prided herself on her ability to acquire rare pieces of history, but friendship with Bruce Wayne has its benefits that has left the good trustees of the Louvre in a state of perpetual glee). She does not bat an eyelid when two men arrive with yet another nondescript Wayne Enterprises briefcase.

That is, until she opens the case and finds herself staring straight at her own past. Menander was wrong about time, she decides, as a sharp aching swell of memories, raw and burning as the day itself, threatens to overwhelm her, it does not heal all wounds.

When she is finally able to, she replies and hopes it conveys the world of gratitude she intends it to:

_Thank you for bringing him back to me._

\--------------------

 

**T-15**

He opens his eyes – his first thought: I’m in heaven.

The illusion quickly falls apart, because his angel speaks and he questions his masculinity, then bullets shatter the quiet, and he returns to reality.

He fights alongside her and also the feeling of being inexplicably drawn to her. She is beautiful, sure, but there is a strength and dignity and wonder in her that makes him want to follow her to the ends of the earth, and that unsettles him.

(He never understood the concept of love at first sight, but he thinks he is starting to believe in it.)

\--------------------

 

**T+36526**

Veld had recovered remarkably from the horror of the Great War. Scars still remain, naturally: in the bricks of the rebuilt bell tower are a brighter red than the faded, war-damaged ones below; in bullets a hundred years old lay embedded in concrete; in its people, where only a small portion of current residents can claim roots dating from the War.

A thoughtfully-placed memorial wall takes up a side of the tower, inscribed with names of the fallen. Each year, on the anniversary of the armistice, the ground beneath is covered with poppies and an assortment of flowers.

Each year, the older townsfolk tell, on the anniversary of the armistice, _she_ returns and walks through the town at night, in her black fur coat and her armour.

Each year, Diana begins the slow, solemn trek through Veld to the airfield, and each year she lays a poppy on the grass below where the sky was set on fire and her world broke at the seams. (It has been a hundred years, but she still dares not to look up at the Belgium skies. In her minds’ eye, she sees his plane exploding in an endless, horrific loop as the phantom sensation of steel tank treads slipping and tightening across her torso creep across her flesh.)

If she closes her eyes and listens to the wind whistle through the grass, she thinks she can hear him whisper, “I love you.”

The past 99 times, she always manages to reply in kind, in time to him,

_I love you._

 

 

 

Fin.


End file.
